Let the Nations Be Glad

Missions Week

God be gracious to us and bless us, and cause his face
to shine upon us—that thy way may be known on the earth, thy
salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise thee, O God;
let all the peoples praise thee. Let the nations be glad and sing
for joy; for thou wilt judge the peoples with uprightness, and
guide the nations on the earth. Let the peoples praise thee, O God;
let all the peoples praise thee. The earth has yielded its produce;
God, our God, blesses us. God blesses us, that all the ends of the
earth may fear him.

Overview of the 1986 Missions Fest Sermon

When I preached on this psalm several years ago in our 1986
Missions Conference, I passed over the main point of the psalm
explaining that Don Richardson was going to cover that at his
seminar. Instead I took my points from the rest of the psalm.

God's Purpose Is to Be Praised in All the Nations

I said that the psalm teaches that God's purpose is to be known
and praised and enjoyed and feared among all the nations.

That was my first point: God is jealous to be known and praised
and enjoyed and feared. He is displeased when people are ignorant
of him or disrespectful to him or bored around him or unduly casual
in his presence.

God Wants People to Know What Kind of God He Is

The second point was that what God wants people to know about
him is that he is a God of justice, a God of power, and a God of
grace.

A God of justice: verse 4—"Thou wilt judge the peoples
with uprightness."

A God of power: verse 4—"[Thou wilt] guide the nations on
the earth."

A God of grace: verse 1—"God be gracious to us and bless
us."

In other words seven years ago I stressed what is just as true,
and even more needed, today—namely, that there is one true
and living God and that he wills to be known by all the peoples of
the world. And that means known subjectively with joy and praise
and fear, and known objectively as being one kind of God and not
another—being just and powerful and gracious.

Psalm 67 does not support the kind of new age spirituality so
common today that simply emphasizes the mood of serenity and
solemnity through meditation and centering without any serious
concern that the Object in focus be the true and living God.

God wants to be known for who he really is: just and gracious
and powerful, so that our praise and joy and fear are rooted in
reality not imagination and really show God's worth and glory.

The Main Point of Psalm 67

God Blesses Us so That the Nations Will Be Blessed

But I passed over the main point seven years ago—at least
in one sense it's the main point. The main point of the psalm is
what the psalmist does with all that truth. He knows that God wills
to be known and praised and enjoyed and feared for who he really
is. So his response is to pray that God would bless Israel in such
a way that God really would be known among the nations.

In other words, the main point of the psalm is the link between
verses 1 and 2 found in the word "that." He prays, "God be gracious
to us and bless us, and cause his face to shine upon us; that thy
way may be known on the earth, thy salvation among all
nations."

So the point I want to stress this morning is this: God blesses
his people for the sake of the nations.

God's Point Throughout History

This was the foundational
truth that God spoke to Abraham when he called him out of Ur of the
Chaldees: "I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you,
and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I
will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will
curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed"
(Genesis 12:2–3).

It was a theme that Isaiah and others picked up in words like,
"I will give you [Israel] as a light to the nations, that my
salvation may reach to the end of the earth" (Isaiah 49:6).

This is almost exactly what the psalmist says in Psalm 67:1–2.
Only the psalmist turns that promise into a prayer (which is what
we should do with promises): "God be gracious to us and bless us,
and cause his face to shine upon us; that thy way may be known on
the earth, thy salvation among all nations."

God promises blessing to his people because he wants them to be
a blessing to the nations. Therefore we should pray for blessing on
ourselves for the sake of the nations.

This is not because God does not love us, or is just using us.
It's because he loves the nations and because he knows that our joy
in all that God is for us increases when it expands into the lives
of others. In other words, when we ask for God's blessing on us for
the sake of the nations we are also asking for our joy to be
full.

When God Will Most Likely Bless Us

God will most likely bless us when we are planning to bless
the nations.

There is another point implied in this main one: if God blesses
his people for the sake of the nations; then God is most likely to
bless us when we are planning and longing and praying to bless the
nations. If God wants his goods to get to the nations, then he will
fill the truck that's driving toward the nations. He will bless the
church that's pouring itself out for unreached peoples of the
world. And this blessing is not payment for a service rendered;
it's power and joy for a mission to accomplish. When we move toward
the unreached peoples, we are not earning God's blessings, we are
leaping into the river of blessings that is already flowing to the
nations.

Two Truths in Verses 1 and 2

So we have two truths in the connection between verses 1 and 2.

God blesses his people for the sake of the nations.

Therefore
God is most likely to bless us when we are planning and longing and
praying to bless the nations—and to make the nations glad in
God.

The way I to want reinforce these two truths in your mind this
morning is to tell you about ten blessings from the last decade
here at Bethlehem, which, I think, illustrate a few ways that God
blesses a people who are bent on blessing the nations—the
unreached peoples of the earth.

How God Led Me to Be a Missions-Minded Pastor

Bethlehem was a fairly missions-minded church when I came 13
years ago, but I was not very missions-minded pastor when I came. A
book like this (Let the Nations Be Glad: the Supremacy of God in
Missions) would have been unthinkable for me to write in 1980. But
God did some pretty decisive things in the fall of 1983—ten
years ago this month.

I preached the sermon, "Missions: The Battle Cry of Christian
Hedonism," and felt that a Rubicon had been crossed. Tom Steller and
I and others that were here in those days felt like a new calling
had come on our lives to direct this church more and more toward
the unfinished task of reaching the unreached peoples.

I look back at my journal from those days and find the evidence
of God's hand getting us ready for more blessing by turning our
hearts to the nations.

For example, on December 9, 1983, I wrote,

Noël and I are reading Ruth Tucker's book, From Jerusalem to
Irian Jaya. Last night I read the section on Zinzendorf. It was
encouraging because it showed that a man can inspire others to do a
thing for which he is unsuited . . . Zinzendorf inspired a great
missionary force but in the few efforts of foreign missionary
service which he made, his experience was unhappy . . .

Whatever I am good for it is encouraging to know that others can
be inspired to do what I may be unsuited for. We are not apparently
locked into only mobilizing duplicates of ourselves.

Is this not already happening at BBC? I am praying that we
become increasingly a launching pad for missionaries and pastors
and teachers and evangelists. Matthew 9:38 now precedes Matthew 28:19–20 in my missionary thinking. I must not feel squeamish, as I
have, about challenging others to do things I may not be very good
at or comfortable in.

Eight days later there is an entry on how inspiring Mary
Drewry's biography of William Carey was to me because of all the
hardships he endured without ever giving up for 40 years in
India.

A month later in January of 1984 I wrote,

A new sense is in my life owing to my new awakening to the big
unfinished Cause of Missions and to the wartime mentality I am
trying to cultivate. The sense is this: as I kneel to pray this
morning about a very busy Monday I feel a new strategicness about
it all. I feel the sense of wanting and expecting God to make every
meeting and visit and report and leisurely contact and Bible study
and preparation a part of a plot, thought through and schemed for
the effectual execution of a strategic invasion of Satan's domain
either to achieve today some act of liberation for the captives, or
to plant decisive explosives at the prison doors and lay the wires
and hide the maps and rations for the day not far hence when I or
someone else will ignite the fuse of God's power.

Six weeks later in the glow of the first Missions in the Manse I
wrote a prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, rise like the sun on our darkness. Be exalted
in your matchless power and wisdom and love! To see you and know
you in your fullness, Lord Christ, is the key to all power . . . So I
look to you. I marvel at you. I long to know you. Shine Lord!
Crack
the dark in every heart, Lord Jesus. Use me. Use me. Use me to fill
the world with your glory.

God was doing something in those days to fix our prayers and our
hopes and our plans on the nations. In view of what Psalm 67 says
in verses 1 and 2 I attribute many of our blessings in the last ten
years to this awakened sense of calling to be a church for the
nations, as well as a church for the neighborhood. God blesses his
people for the sake of the nations. And if we devote ourselves to
reaching the nations, God will very likely bless us.

10 Ways God Has Blessed Us at Bethlehem

Let me list off ten of the blessings that I think have come for
the sake of the unreached peoples of the earth.

1. God-Centered Worship

For the nations God has blessed us with ten years of intense,
earnest, authentic, God-centered, hope-giving, life-changing
worship. One of the reasons for this blessing is that we see
worship as the fuel and the goal of world missions. The goal of
world missions is the gladness of the peoples in the glory of God.
The fuel of that goal is our own gladness in God. If we are not
real and deep and fervent in our worship of God, we will not
commend him among the peoples with genuineness. How can you say to
the nations, "Be glad in God!" if you are not glad in God?

2. Globe-Circling Prayer

For the nations God has blessed us with passionate,
God-sized, globe-circling prayer. We do not have big prayer
meetings. But there are many small clusters of praying people. And
the ones I am a part of bear the wonderful marks of missionary
zeal. They are laced with the bigness and unstopability of God's
purposes in history.

3. Suffering

For the nations God has blessed us with suffering. We cannot
calculate the good effects of God's severe mercies in these recent
years. It has broken us, softened us, weaned us more from pride and
from the temporary things of the world, and fixed us more on the
eternal matters of salvation and holiness and the lostness of the
peoples. God gives us the gift of suffering for the sake of the
nations.

4. Courageous Faith

For the nations God has blessed many of you with courageous
faith. When Tim White was shot there, was no mass exodus from the
city. When the violence subsided in Congo, Steve and Julie went
back. When there was the threat of radioactivity in their town in
China, Mark and Rene went back. When ELWA was surrounded by rebel
forces, David Decker stayed behind. When political upheavals are
expected in Guinea this December, David and Faith go in anyway. God
is blessing us with the preciousness of genuine courageous faith
because we have our hearts set on the nations. They won't be
reached without it.

5. A World Christian Pastoral Staff

For the nations God has blessed us with a World Christian
pastoral staff. Is it an accident that all of us have been overseas
in one kind of ministry or another? Dan Lehn in China, David
Livingston in Nigeria, Tom Steller in Cameroon, Joan Lovestrand in
Indonesia and the Philippines, Brad Nelson in Mexico and Thailand,
Greg Dirnberger in Japan, Dean Palermo in Colombia, David Michael in
Ecuador, and I in Liberia. This is a blessing from God on this
church for the sake of the nations.

6. Increasing Numbers of People

For the nations God has blessed us with increasing numbers of
people. In 1983 there were less than 600 of us in worship. Today
there are about 1,200. Here's an entry from my journal in April
1983: "Let's grow in order to build a sending base for the
frontiers. Let's think of recruiting people for the mission of
evangelizing unevangelized cultures. God will not honor our zeal
for growth if it is motivated by vanity. But he will if it is
motivated by love for his glory and concern for the cultures
without a gospel witness." I believe God honored that and has given
us growth for the sake of the nations.

7. Increased Giving

For the nations God has blessed us with increased giving. Not
just because there are more people but because there is more
radical commitment to live and give like heaven and hell are at
stake. The giving per attender has far more than doubled between
1983 and 1993. Our missions budget has increased in that period six-fold from $72,000 to $484,000 and from 22% of the budget to 34% of
the budget while the compensation for pastors and staff has dropped
from 52% to 42% of the budget. This remarkable increase is the
blessing of God for the sake of the nations.

8. Our New Building

For the nations God has blessed us with this building. That
is a controversial thing to say. Not all of us thought we
should build a building like this. But God is merciful with the
honest disagreements of his people. The fund raising plan was
called SPAN I and then SPAN III—Spreading Praise to All
Nations. God blessed us with this building for the sake of the
nations. That was our plan—that it exist to spread praise to
all the nations. If we honor that intention, God will see to it
that the building is paid for, and perhaps sooner than the seven
years that remain on the loan.

9. A Vision and Prayer Goal

For the nations God has blessed us with a vision, a prayer
goal, of 2000 by 2000—to send 2,000 people out from us (in
short term or vocational missions) and to win 2,000 people from
lostness here at home, by the year 2000.

10. Missionaries

For the nations God has blessed us with missionaries. It is
overwhelming how many people, younger and older, are being called
by God to uproot from the comforts and security of Minnesota to
minister cross-culturally for the sake of the kingdom. Of the 85
people listed on your blue folder this morning only nine of them, I
believe, were already on the field in 1982. And besides these, there
are now over 50 people in the nurture program on the way into
missions at Bethlehem. In one sense, Bethlehem is not just a
church, it's a missionary recruiting and support agency. God
continues to answer the prayer of Matthew 9:38 among us: "Lord of
the harvest, send out workers into your fields."

Prayer for God's Added Blessing

We have seen in Psalm 67 and we have seen in our experience the
truth that God blesses his people for the sake of the nations. Now
I want to pray for his added blessing, especially on two groups of
people.

One, those of you who have discerned God's call on your life and
are now moving intentionally through whatever processes are
necessary toward a missionary vocation cross-culturally.

Two, those of you who in recent years or even days have been
unsettled where you are and are wondering seriously if God might be
calling you and are seeking his will in this matter and would like
prayer for clarity and assurance whether for next year or five
years from now.

There is every reason biblically to believe that the blessing of
God will remain on us in the years to come if we remain committed
to being a blessing to the unreached peoples of the world—not
just to the people around us, and not neglecting the people around
us, but remembering that there are several thousands of people
groups with no witness to Christ at all. Not forgetting that the
University of Minnesota has thousands of unbelievers next door, but
also remembering that in Turkey there are 343 universities with
500,000 students with not one Christian student organization
planted on those campuses.

We are on the brink of a tremendous surge in missionary sending
at Bethlehem. It is necessary that all ten of these blessings from
the last ten years keep on abounding—and more. Give
yourselves to prayer for the company of goers and for the enlarging
and strengthening of the sending base here at home.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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